Just Saying

Monday, 29 July 2013

You're my love, not life! - Chapter 7

“I lost.” Kartik gasped.

“No. We lost.” I replied.

We
did not know what had gone wrong at our side. That morning, Shubham’s
father called my mother to let her know that they would be pleased to
have me as their daughter in law. I was astonished on receiving the
call. Didn’t Shubham tell me he was in love with someone else? How the
hell can he agree for the wedding then? I was tired of convincing my mom
and finally, I gave up. I was ready to do whatever made her smile.

“I’ll shift to Delhi next month probably.” Kartik said adjusting himself over the couch.

“Why?” I asked astounded. I didn’t want him to go out of my life in anyway.

“I have nothing to do here in Mumbai now. And even I have applied at a
good firm in Delhi, it would be great opportunity for my career. Fingers
crossed, if I get through.”

“I love you,” I said and enveloped him in my arms. I did not want the thought of him going away to cross the shield of my mind.

“And this guy loves you back,” he kissed my head.

“It’s late. I should leave for home, mom would be worrying for me.” I said.

“Aditi,” he straightened himself from the couch and hugged me again.

“Always take care of yourself and remember that I love you, no matter
what. These three years were the best of my life and no one can ever
take them away from me. Never ever.” He whispered.

“Yes. Our
memories are just ours, no one can take them away. Let me go now, I’ll
see you tomorrow. I love you and always will.”

He loosened the
grip of his hug and I moved back. I turned to leave but that evening my
heart was pacing faster than usual. It felt as if it is never going to
see the reason it beats for, ever again. It felt as if it was ceasing to
beat. I walked out of his flat gradually by controlling my wandering
mind.

“Listen Aditi,” he shouted from behind. I turned to his
voice. He walked towards me, placed his palms on my cheeks, planted a
serene kiss on my forehead and said, “I may be late tomorrow evening.
Have some important project to work upon in office, I may have to work
overtime. In case, I am not home on time, you have the extra key to
enter in. Wait for me.”

I nodded and entered the elevator. I smiled at him from inside, he smiled back but his eyes cried, a silent cry.

The next evening as I left from my office, I went straight to Kartik’s
apartment. As I reached the sixth floor, I found his flat door locked as
he had said it to be. I entered in and walked towards the refrigerator
to take the water bottle out of it. As I went closer, I saw a small
yellow stick-on note over it. I pulled it off and gave it a read.

It read, “This is where once I kept my cell phone and when I did not
attend your numerous calls, you rushed at my flat and kicked my bum for
being so careless. My bum still pains you donkey.”

I could not
understand what was going on. I looked around in haste to find another
pieces of notes if any. I ran to the kitchen beside. I found another
yellow note which said, “And here you always experimented new dishes
taking me as the target :(”. Gradually, things were getting clearer for
me. I slowly moved towards the dining area. Another note lay on the
dining table, “This is where we used to have our dinner together, and
your burnt cement like chapattis tasted like soft baked bread here. I
will miss them.”

Tremors emerged in my heart and my breath
turned heavy. As my mind was getting to know exactly what had went
wrong, my eyes fell over a paper over the glass table. I ran to pick it
up. It read, “My Aditi, from now, you won’t be mine. Yes, you are
getting it right. You will never see me again. I lied to you that I was
moving to Delhi next month, instead I was moving today. Both of us tried
our best to be together but it seems that I was just your love and not
your life. To make things easy for you, I have to go. I know if you had
known that I was going away, you would have never let me go. But I had
to go, for your good and for my good.

You gave me reasons to
live, now I have none, but life moves on. I would certainly find a
reason to survive, to breathe. The thought that I have to live without
you pinches my heart, it murders my soul. How can I stay away from my
life? Can you stay away from writing? Can you quite blogging? As it is
the reason for you to live, you were my reason to breathe but now I have
to live with a hollow soul. But you have to keep smiling; you have to
make your mother smile. Go ahead and live your life. I hope we will
never see each other again. I am leaving the book “My best days” for
you, we have all our memories captured in here, keep them safe. I love
you and always will. – Yours and only yours, Kartik.

He left.
He left me alone. He left just because I can go ahead with my life and
make my mother happy. The only thing that pinched me was that, he
thought writing was my only reason to breathe. He was the reason too. I
decided that I would never write again. I would live without two reasons
for me to breathe. If he was living a hollow life, I’ll live the same
too. I sat on the floor and screamed my tears out while looking at the
book he left. I left for my home and closed myself in my room. As I
thought of quitting writing, I checked Shamita’s message all over again.

“I love someone and he is my life.” Reading the first line I felt that
how lucky Shamita was that her love turned out to be her life. But
second line sank me in pool of sadness “I had lost my life to drugs and
to fulfill the loss, I write.

Before I met him, he was just
another random guy but life began changing for him. He got friends with
few so called high class rich brats and got addicted to the world of
drugs. He was being pushed to the dark life of living dead. We had
fights over it several times, I tried pushing him to rehab but nothing
worked. At last, I posed as a loser. One day, my cell phone buzzed to
let me know that he was no more. Over dosage of the drugs was the
reason.

I failed to express my emotions that moment. I just
knew that he was gone… leaving me behind alone with his memories to live
with.
Now, I feel happy when I get the characters of my life
alive in my stories. Somewhere I feel that as long as I am writing, the
longer I will find him near me. He occupies most of my heart and in
return I try my best to write my heart out of me. I know that I don’t
write as beautiful as you. Still, I am attaching few of my articles with
the message. I will feel great if you read them just once. Because,
somewhere the purity of your blog ‘Aditi Speaks’ inspired me to hold the
pen and make my soul alive.”

Shamita’s message brought tears
in my eyes again. They were emotional and so were her articles; coming
straightly from her heart and soul. I wiped my tears and left a message
to her.

“Hello Shamita. I apologize for replying you late. I read your articles and I love the fact that you write from your soul.”

In no time she replied “Thank you for reading Aditi and replying too. You just made my day.”

For the first time in the day I smiled and replied “I want to gift you something. Can I?”

She took few minutes to reply. I thought she must be thinking that all
of the sudden what I wanted to gift her. I waited for her reply.

“What? I am shocked. I mean you inspired me to write. I must gift you something.”

“I want to gift you my blog “Aditi Speaks” I said straight away.

“From now it will be Shamita Speaks” I wrote another message.

“What? How is that possible? I am so sorry dear. I can’t handle this. I
mean I write just for me and my stories are just limited to my
computer. I can’t even think of replacing you.” She replied.

“I know you write for yourself that’s why I chose you. If you won’t take
it then this blog will be shut down forever. I can find several people
who can even pay me for the blog. But, they want to write for fame and
this blog is alive only because I write from soul and you are just too
perfect to take it. Please don’t say no… just believe in you. Forget
about the people for once and just write for yourself,” I completed.

She was hesitating to take away the blog. Yet somehow I made her
believe in herself and “Aditi Speaks” then became “Shamita Speaks”

******

Zinath was completely engrossed in my story… I saw the clock, it was
around 3:25 am, still she had no sleep in her eyes. I drank some water
from the bottle resting near. Meanwhile she adjusted herself in the
blanket and said “So, that’s why you stopped blogging and all of the
sudden ‘Aditi speaks’ became ‘Shamita Speaks’”.